Neanderthals were to humans, as dwarves are to elves. That is, a evolutionary path that was extremely tough, adapted to the cold, and fought in melee ambushing of bison up to mammoths. For the final point the racial values include a series of “Ancient skills” especially suited for melee combat and planning.

Requirements: Neanderthals require a Constitution and Strength of 11 or higher. Since Neanderthal value has high Hit Dice value by default it had to have a minimum in Constitution. Having another requirement makes the race more difficult to qualify for than more common races like dwarf or elf, but not nearly so difficult as Nobirians.

Restrictions: Neanderthals body structure struggles with ranged weaponry, though they can throw their weapons and operate mechanisms. For this reason, Neanderthals cannot wield slings, staff slings or bows of any kind. They can wield crossbows and arbalests. All Neanderthal classes must take at least 1 point in their racial value.

Custom Powers:

• Night Vision: Neanderthals have larger eyes, and can see by full moonlight as if it were daylight, by half moonlight as if it were full moonlight, and by starlight as if it were half moonlight. When indoors, Neanderthals can see twice the usual distance afforded by a given light source. However, they cannot see in total darkness.

• Cold Resistance: Adapted to the cold over 250,000 years Neanderthals resist the cold suffering only half damage from that type. They also gain a +2 bonus on saving throws against spells or special abilities that deal that damage type. When hypothermic, a Neanderthal only suffers 1d3-1 CON loss per hour.

Neanderthal 0: The race also receives Night vision (1 Power). This isn’t a spell-like ability, so the default cost for it is 40 XP. However, this is a powerful custom ability, so cost is raised to 75 XP. However this reduced by 40XP in step 5(f) to 535 XP. The total cost for Neanderthal 0 is 35 XP.

Neanderthal 1: The race receives one Hit Die, cost as 2500 XP. The cost is increased to 2535 XP.

Neanderthal 2: The race receives one ancient skill and Cold Resistance (1 Power). Ancient skills cost 75 XP each. Cold Resistance is not a spell-like ability, so the default cost is 40 XP, but we cost it at 75 XP. The total increases to 2685 XP, which we round to 2700 XP

Neanderthal 3: The race receives one ancient skill. Ancient skills cost 75 XP each, so the cost is increased to 2775 XP

Neanderthal 4: The race receives Magical Cold Resistance (1 Power), Combat Ferocity (1 power) and the Blind Fighting Proficiency (1 Power). None of these are spell-like abilities, so the default cost for them is 3 x 40 = 120 XP. However, we will continue to cost them at 75xp each, for a cost of 3 x 75 = 225 XP. This increases the total to 3000 XP.

Ancient Skills: Alertness, Ambushing, Animal Reflexes, Combat Ferocity, Combat Reflexes, Combat Trickery (Knock Down, Wrestling), Fighting Style Specialization, Land Surveying, Mountaineering, Natural Stealth, Passing without Trace, Burst Sprinting*, Skirmishing, Skulking, Swashbuckling, Vermin Slaying

*Burst Sprinting: During battle the character can increase his combat speed by 10’ when wearing medium or lighter armor and carrying 9 stone or less. This does not apply during overland movement.

So a summary of changes above. Obviously XP cost is massively revised due to this change of the Hit Die. You’ll notice our XP from 0 to 1 racial value is massive, and this is due to the recommendation by Arbrethil that any race with bonus hit die, aught have it at RV 1, and implicitly all members of that race have at least 1 point in their racial value. Initially I was opposed as something nags at me when reducing maximum level for this. But for most play where Neanderthals are still tribal being emperor doesn’t matter much. An easy fix for those interested is just move it to RV 0, or make a Neanderthal “Nobirian” that can break past those limits. Thus our RV 0 is essentially a throwaway or could be 0, however I kept the Night Vision there for applying step 5(f).

Next up is renaming the new proficiency, as I had accidentally made a alliteration of Rushing with Running. I had thought of trying to distance from Running when creating the proficiency, and Arbrethil’s suggestion of Burst Sprinting fits far better.

I also have added combat ferocity to RV 4, as the cost after these changes was 75 XP away from 3000, so it was added to nicely round out the progression.

As recompense for this error, have some tables that would be specific for neanderthals given they have a different default carrying capacity and size. Also I have included the Visibility in the Wild ranges modified for the night vision the Neanderthals have.

Neanderthals were to humans, as dwarves are to elves. That is, a evolutionary path that was extremely tough, adapted to the cold, and fought in melee ambushing of bison up to mammoths. For the final point the racial values include a series of “Ancient skills” especially suited for melee combat and planning.

Requirements: Neanderthals require a Constitution and Strength of 11 or higher. Since Neanderthal value has high Hit Dice value by default it had to have a minimum in Constitution. Having another requirement makes the race more difficult to qualify for than more common races like dwarf or elf, but not nearly so difficult as Nobirians.

Restrictions: Neanderthals body structure struggles with ranged weaponry, though they can throw their weapons and operate mechanisms. For this reason, Neanderthals cannot wield slings, staff slings or bows of any kind. They can wield crossbows and arbalests.

Custom Powers:

• Night Vision: Neanderthals have larger eyes, and can see by full moonlight as if it were daylight, by half moonlight as if it were full moonlight, and by starlight as if it were half moonlight. When indoors, Neanderthals can see twice the usual distance afforded by a given light source. However, they cannot see in total darkness.

• Cold Resistance: Adapted to the cold over 250,000 years Neanderthals resist the cold suffering only half damage from that type. They also gain a +2 bonus on saving throws against spells or special abilities that deal that damage type. When hypothermic, a Neanderthal only suffers 1d3-1 CON loss per hour.

  

Neanderthal 0: The race’s value mimics Hit Dice 1, so we add the 500 XP cost of the mimicked build value to the total. The race also receives Night vision (1 Power). This isn’t a spell-like ability, so the default cost for it is 40 XP. However, this is a powerful custom ability, so cost is raised to 75 XP. This is added with the mimicked hit dice for a total of 575 XP. However this reduced by 40XP in step 5(f) to 535 XP. The total cost for Neanderthal 0 is 535 XP

Neanderthal 1: The race receives one ancient skill and Cold Resistance (1 Power). Ancient skills cost 75 XP each. Cold Resistance is not a spell-like ability, so the default cost is 40 XP, but we cost it at 75 XP. The cost is increased to 685 XP, that we round up to 700 XP.

Neanderthal 2: The race’s value mimics Hit Dice 2, so we add the 1000 XP cost of the mimicked build value to the total, bringing it up to 1700 XP.

Neanderthal 3: The race receives one ancient skill. Ancient skills cost 75 XP each, so the cost is increased to 1775 XP.

Neanderthal 4: The race receives Magical Cold Resistance (1 Power), Animal Reflexes (1 Power) and the Blind Fighting Proficiency (1 Power). None of these are spell-like abilities, so the default cost for them is 3 x 40 = 120 XP. However, we will continue to cost them at 75xp each, for a cost of 3 x 75 = 225 XP. This increases the total to 2000 XP.

Ancient Skills: Alertness, Ambushing, Animal Reflexes, Combat Ferocity, Combat Reflexes, Combat Trickery (Knock Down, Wrestling), Fighting Style Specialization, Land Surveying, Mountaineering, Natural Stealth, Passing without Trace, Rushing*, Skirmishing, Skulking, Swashbuckling, Vermin Slaying

*Rushing: During battle the character can increase his combat speed by 10’ when wearing medium or lighter armor and carrying 9 st or less. This does not apply during overland movement.

So my reasoning for the build of this racial value began with looking at what the real life counterparts to our fictional derivative were like. Some of this is still being questioned scientifically; but a short description of a good 8 hours of research was that Neanderthals may have been a artic specialized, a more short term power evolution and large game hunters specie.

This may have also been combined with Neanderthals being a “Melee” variety of humans, given that arrow making evidence, or long ranged spear throwing evidence are both absent in their sites (Such as alatls). This may have been due to them hunting game too big for either of these, their bone structure couldn’t accomplish it or that the technology didn’t transfer in the time needed before they were driven to extinction. There is also some evidence that their spears were primarily of the thrusting variety to reinforce this idea.

Whatever the scientific consensus will end up being, this was a sufficient basis to create a different human for ACKS, and one I think would be interesting in play. A race, with no technology or land of their own, with survivability, short term power and close combat as their modus operandi. Combined with Night Vision and I feel the racial build has become something that’d be good fun trying out, especially with the context of adventuring to perhaps create a new civilization from caves and hidden valleys. My mind wanders to fighting great creatures, beastmen and many other enemies in the darkness and forgotten lands of the world.

This build also does conform to the Monster Manual entry, which was another large contributor for shaping the racial build. The only major differences between this racial build and the Monster Manual entry are that the Neanderthal warriors do not get their +1 to damage as Formidable warriors as this racial build is meant to be used to create the class that represents that trait and those warriors.

If I ever end up revisiting this build, I can tell that I want to expand the Ancient Skills selection with more entirely new built proficiencies, but for the moment this feels correct in stylization. This build is currently sitting at 8 revisions from the initial idea, and this is the result of narrowing down to something reasonable and likely balanced within the ACKS system. If anyone has any suggestions I’d be happy to hear them.

Not so with ACKS. Today we’ll do a brief breakdown on the fall of Azen Kairn, the last southern dwarven kingdom known to us at the time it fell.

Azen Kairn is one of the few dwarf locations we actually have a decent amount of information on, given to us by Sürcaneus of Cyfaraun in By This Axe. Existing at current time as Orm the red dragons lair, in the past it was very powerful with its order of battle on page 50 of By This Axe. That order of battle is

At its peak, Azen Kairn had a population of 43,680 dwarves. From this, the vault could field a total of 1,664 warriors organized in 14 companies. There were eight companies of heavy infantry (organized into one “Shield Anvil” and one “Striking Hammer” battalion); four companies of foot crossbow; and two squadrons of mounted crossbow. In time of need, Azen Kairn could call upon another 2,600 militia from the able-bodied Craftborn and Workborn dwarves.

Breaking that down quickly, that would make Azen Kairn have 8772 families from 43,680 dwarves total1. Next is to note that this population isn’t actually enough to support that many militia, as dwarven militia is determined by population2 and here we only have enough for 1,949 trained militia. The easy abduction to make here is that given the population cannot support it, that must mean that the 43,680 dwarves must be the Urban population. How much population are we missing from the total realm then?

Missing 652 militia from our line of battle, we multiply that by 9gp/militia dwarf for their wages. Then we neatly divide that number, 5,859gp by 2gp/family to find that we are missing 2,929 families from our rolls.

Interestingly this presents another problem as this is nowhere near enough peasant families to support the urban settlement3 we have determined unless the domain has a trade route to realms with enough farms to support it. For the sake of a self sufficient Kingdom capital, we’ll look at making the numbers available work.

As a clue to fixing this mismatch we find on notes around a dwarf king in later pages of the tome.

During the Beastman Wars, King Torin Kairn, called the Fat, ordered his brewmasters to add strains of lion’s mane into the food crop. His hope was that his warriors would gain a higher tolerance for wounds and injury. The sad outcome was that the dwarves became addicted to the analgesics in their mushrooms, leading to an epidemic of overeating that made many cohorts too big to fit in their armor. The obesity of their vaultguards may have contributed to Azen Kairn’s defeat by Orm.4

So by that passage we know that Azen Kairn made use of heavy mushroom farming, as well as mushroom experimentation. We’ll set aside the experimentation for a moment and look at what we need for maintaining the population. With 2,929 peasant families, we assign 2,000 of them to the mushroom farms. This is cutting it fairly close, but things work out to keep the vault fed.

With the militia taken care of, that leaves the rest of the order of battle. Which by most standards is extremely strong, though that is appropriate for the last remaining Meniri Kingdom. At 4 companies of foot crossbowmen, 8 companies of heavy infantry in 2 blocks, and 2 company of mounted crossbows, Azen Kairn is robustly defended by a fair margin over what it needs as a minimum.5

This in addition to being appropriate, was likely needed as their only known vassal was Azen Radokh, a marginal mining outpost in those days. At 6.4gp/family this is enough to have a great offensive power for a dwarven vault, and the militia for defensive. Altogether this would amount to 105.73 Company scale BR.

Depressingly as a possibility, this might have been a carefully stewarded built up force as a final attempt by the Khador-Kairn lineage to reclaim dwarven realms westward, perhaps even Azen Khador itself. With dwarven non-standard forces such as Earth-Forgers, Furnace-Wives, Automatons and other now lost dwarven gnosis, they could clobber beastmen forces fairly regularly. Even beastmen legions or their attritionally affected forces could be taken on with good odds of success.

Another thing we can add onto this is that we can see that Azen Kairn in this configuration only produces 2,632 gp in profit per month. Reasonable, but let’s modify things a bit. A Kingdom should prosper more than this! This is easy enough given the dwarven domain rules.

Azen Radokh hints at nearby lands being ore laden, in all likelihood so is Azen Kairn. Thus we’ll move 2700 families from the urban center to mines. We’ll peg them at least of 12gp/mining family value. Fairly modest, either a result of industrial improvements, good initial ore deposits, or good management.

We skyrocket from 2,632gp/month after personnel expenses of the ruler, up to 13,716gp/month.

More than enough to justify the heavy garrison, and plenty to hire a good number of lvl 6-8 individuals for the ruler’s personnel retinue and officer corps.

But lets go a bit further than the 12gp/mining family. There is good reason given another nearby location to Azen Kairn and directly connected to it, the Earthway

The Cesta Ithan, or Earthway, is a subterranean river that travels from its source near Azen Kairn southeast to eventually connect with the Mirmen southwest of Türos Tellë. When dwarves dwelled in Azen Kairn, the Earthway was an underground thoroughfare for shipping to and from the great vault and provided the hydraulic power for its intricate machineries. With beast men marauders an ever-present threat, the dwarves constructed a number of redoubts to protect the shipping lane. This redoubt was one of the largest, a formidable bastion that guarded the confluence of the Earthway and the Mirmen. When Azen Kairn fell to the fires of the red dragon Orm during the Beastman Wars, the redoubt on the Earthway was lost to Orm’s forces. Now it is ruled by Orm’s daughter Nindukugga, and a tribe of ogres that serves her.

This river suggests that Azen Kairn had Delved Deeply6 , a mark of a very developed mining environment. And that at some point Azen Kairn had the Underground River result, which they used to power waterwheels and ferry ore. This gives the mine, and any other that connect to it, the ability to construct 1 additional industrial improvement to the mines. Given that they made use of it, they likely hired on a Dwarven Excavator, and improved the mines to their maximum since they had the opportunity. Improving to the maximum for a total of 5gp per mining family improvement. Even if their mines were the lowest value at 10gp/family, Azen Kairn would be even higher than we thought earlier, that brings us up to 22,029gp.

For our numbers we’ll go further and start with 12gp. This could be silver-lead, ornamental grade gemstones or even prized colors of quarry stone. At 5 industrial improvements Azen Kairn could be making 27,571gp a month from its mines.

Of course 2700 families don’t fit in one mine, at least normally. Given our ability to choose the land we can presume all 7 hexes are ore laden. Dividing 2700 by 7 6 mile hexes yields roughly 385 families per mine, which is easily achievable. There is a 1/3rd chance this is the case, so for now we’ll say they all manage to get silver-lead. Even if not all hexes are ore laden, its not difficult for Azen Kairn to expand or control more than they strictly need. As well we’ll roll the hex Azen Kairn is situated on for its ores sustainable capacity, and find it has a sustainable capacity of 1200 families. The rest we’ll keep at 400 for now. If we did do strictly by what they need it’d only need be 2 6 mile hexes but that is a different matter. We’ll also say all the mines but the main mine (Maximum improvements) get improved by 1gp by connection to the Earthway.

Looking at a map of the region, the Earthway Redoubt is 36 miles away. Given we don’t want to make this a noncontiguous domain, this results in a domain that is a straight line from point 41 (Azen Kairn) to point 51 (Earthway Redoubt). Odd for a domain but control of strategic resources can create odd scenarios for any military power.

At the end of all our modifications, Azen Kairn is outputting 24,359gp. This could be split into 3 lvl 9 retainers, or a larger number of level 8 retainers and so on.

So ends the current analysis of Azen Kairn, at the time of it’s fall. There are other features that could be added to it, such as vassals outside of Azen Radokh, but there are not any hints to ruins besides the Earthway Redoubt.

It also could be modified even further to have the maximum industrial improvements, further mushroom farming and retainers that could allow it to make even more revenue. I felt however this is a good baseline and any further modification could double or even triple the revenue of the domain if needed. If one is so inclined to try to maximize the domain I shall include a link to the spreadsheet used for Azen Kairn, and is the most up to date spreadsheet I have for creating dwarven domains.

I wish you all a happy new year.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V7tkVKfK_eDltINlvHt5650TEEGutEVK273gciTotiQ/edit?usp=sharing

So for the logistics we’re going over we’re mainly concerned by three things unique to dwarves in the Auran Empire.

1. Explosives, specifically petards1.

2. Mushroom Beer

3. Automaton fuel and its duress on supplies

Each of these on their own are usually expensive, and together the end result is a XX purchase all together. But our gracious overlord, Orm, can afford that easily and I see no reason he wouldn’t if the dwarves say all it will knock over fortresses like sand-castles for him.

So explosives. In the Auran Empire, only the dwarves have them in the form of siege petards. We’re gonna say the dwarves with the opportunity for a blank check budget, buy enough to breach an entire fortress wall at the platoon scale. We’ll use the scaling down rules in ACKS II Domains at War Battles2 . That gives us 225SHP to make a breach in a 10’ x 30’ x 10’ wall, and now we can calculate how much explosives we need by a Petards SHP Damage.

Petards are the name of explosives used for attacking fortifications, come in varying weights, from simply 1 lb up to 40lb3, and damage ranges from 1d6 to 4d6 for those weights. We’ll be going with the average 4.5 damager per d6 die of the 4d6 40 lb variety of Petard, as the Excavator class has access to the Pyroclastics power which adds +1 damage to petards.

We need to do 225 SHP damage, divide that by our damage of 4.5 damage x 4 die = 18 damage per 40 lb petard and we get a total number at 12.5 petards. Breaking that down to weight, that’s 50 stone weight of petards, or 500 lbs of explosives. A quarter ton of explosives applied expertly by the dwarves at weak points or already reduced fortifications passes as a reasonable amount of explosives for the task at hand.

Fortunately for the dwarves, we’re still operating off a blank check budget, which is great as at 125 gp per lb of petard we get a price tag for the explosives at 62,500 gold pieces total.

Next is the Mushroom brews. These mimic cantrips4 and are very useful for adventurers, as well to a limited extent for troops. We’re gonna be loading up with almost all of them, as they can be loaded up into barrels easily. Holding 20 gallons, that’s 160 pints of Mushroom beer, and with Mushroom brew at 25gp per pint that’s 4,000 gold pieces per. Pricy but not onerously so, especially considering each barrel is more than enough for one battle. As for the list and reasons why

1. Birds Tail- Purifies Water and Meals

2. Death-cap - Deals acid damage as a thrown weapon

3. Kidney Mushroom - Heals 1 extra HP for day of rest

4. Lions Mane - Heals 1 HP of damage

5. Royal Sun - Allows user to function for 2 hours acting without penalty from fatigue or exhaustion during this time

6. Tree Bread - Grants 1 temporary HP for a hour

These brews are typically used at adventuring scale so we need to scale this up.
Birds Tail and Royal sun we can set aside as these are included merely to give the possibility of emergency measures such as cut off from supplies or need to flee in the digging automaton.

The ones most relevant for battle will be Tree Bread, Lions Mane and the Death-cap. The Death-cap we distribute to the Excavators who already lean into throwing Oils and explosives. That would give us another damage type in any type of ambush scenario or a poison to anoint the vault-guards weapons with5 giving their weapons a 1d6 of poison-acid damage, or coating up to 3,200 missiles6. The Tree Bread will give any unit at Platoon scale 1 temporary HP for an hour, making a unit a 1+1 Unit, making the Unit Hit Points 10/8 for all dwarven troops. Finally the Lions Mane, we can heal the unit. At company scale this is 70 HP7 per UHP, while at platoon scale this is 17.5 HP per UHP8, so that will be 18 pints per UHP for all dwarven troop types. With 160 Pints in our barrels, that’s 8 UHP for the entirety of the Expedition.

The Mushroom brews at a unit wide scale could be dialed back, but do enhance the unit’s survivability far beyond what a magic-less force can do ordinarily, and combined with the dwarves already hardy nature makes a hard to break force even harder.

The final logistical component is the question of “Does the fuel needed for the Automatons enact a large burden on any supply trains”. This is solved by simply figuring out how much fuel is needed, how often and how much we expect to use.

The Firepacks we can expect to be used exceedingly sparingly, as the unit will only be using them in assaults, maybe ambushes. At 4 lbs of fuel per firepack, we need 48 lb total for each battle. Or just 4.8 stone worth of fuel. Lighter than a suit of armor, the troops or a mule could carry that along easily and is so limited we needn’t bother with checking against supply costs.

Next is the Autogyro, which as the force’s sole aerial reconnaissance craft is making flights daily. This machine requires 7 stone per day of fuel at a cost of 21gp. Weekly supply cost of 147gp/week. Roughly equal to 2 cavalry platoons. Not terrible for the utility aerial recon grants you.

Finally is the Underground Transport, and this can’t be moved on its own, and isn’t as fast as the Autogyro, so it’ll need to tunnel alongside the troops during movement. As such it’ll be used daily, though with its fuel timespan being in week intervals, the machine only needs 4x it’s weekly needs, at 312gp worth of supplies. At 5 platoons worth of supply cost, its a beast but it can also carry it’s own fuel supply for up to 3 months such that we can also set it aside. Getting what it needs and stocking up in advance is completely plausible, as are underground depots if need be.

Overall the concerns on logistics for the automatons is largely subverted by either rare usage, or the ability to carry their own fuel supplies. In the future I will go over this subject in more detail as Automatons do create their own niche in this regard but we can safely ignore it for this unit.

Tactics for the unit can be similar to many different troop formations and types from Sturmtruppen to Commandos, Grenadiers, Air Recon, Heavy Infantry, Skirmishers or Sappers. If you need a label for what to call this formation, Special Troops is probably best here. For tactics with these Special Troops scouting out, then hitting hard in unconventional means, and either leaving immediately or staying only long enough to keep a breach open for follow up forces. Three easy examples to exemplify this would be the following.

1. Ambush

2. A siege sap

3. A assault to create a Breach

For any ambush, the goal should be to leverage the ranged firepower of the unit. The Machinist’s Automatons, the Excavators explosives, Mushroom beers and military oil, and the Crossbowmen’s volleys make for a potent volley to potentially cripple a enemy force in one devastating strike.

The rest of the unit should be positioned to make sure this ambush doesn’t spoil, or become outflanked by the enemy, keeping the enemy unawares or funneled to the kill-zone. To boost this, the Excavators and Machinists should be able to quickly erect or dig out concealed positions for the ambush.

Siege Saps on the other hand, are very much a typical siege tactic, this unit would just be digging them at a extremely quick pace, and with the explosives on hand could level a fortress in quick order. If the siege saps could be kept hidden or out of sight among the beast-men horde surrounding the unit, it’d be a fatal surprise to any fortress in the borderlands.

The final tactic, an Assault, would be the quick option to the Siege Sap. We’ve built this unit out to be able to take out any wall with its explosives, but with the Jump Troops and Underground Transport we have a deadly one two three combo. Take the walls and towers from above, sow chaos inside the fortress with a platoon delivered inside and blow up a breach. Withdraw quickly once the beastmen reinforce, and that’s their job done.

We could go over dozens of permutations of these tactics, but we can leave that to the individual DM’s circumstance and intuition.

Deception for this force is mainly facing their employer, as the dwarves are very much hoping for a opportunity to get out from under Orms thumb. The how in that scenario is is built into the Automatons.

It should be fairly easy for the dwarves to rig up a false backend, or false engine bay to take up more space in the Underground transport, as Beastmen and Orm aren’t likely to understand Automatons beyond the most basic. Allowing for more supplies than they strictly need to be stockpiled inside it and further stockpiled in bunkers the machine can dig out in short order below ground. Corruption like this could be making bribes to the beast-men, asking for more from home or looting when the beastmen are doing the heavy lifting.

Additionally if the leadership for this expedition are feeling bold, a scion of Clan Khador could be kept within the rear of the vehicle. Any heir out from Azen Radokh and it’s subservience to Orm is a long term new player that could reliably sway the remaining Azen Radokh forces down the line into action when needed.

Any moves the dwarves make will be towards getting into a fight where they can make a escape. Whether that means sacrificing a portion of the expedition, or at least seeming to, is a cost the leadership would be more than willing to pay for getting out from underneath Orms thumb. Any means of deception like a fake, or real, automaton wreck for the Tunneler Transport if necessary, a grand explosion of the military oil and fuel stores, anything when that fight goes down to make it seem the expedition was reduced to nothing, or a few shattered survivors who must believe the rest of the host is dead.

Successfully pulling this off in light of divinations, scrying, telepathy and more would be hard to pull off, and the consequences for anything getting out to Orm could be a disaster for Azen Radokh. The Dwarves don’t have many means of countering all the means they think Orm may have and the ones they likely know they don’t even know what they could be. At most back home, they maybe could have gotten something from the Head Craftpriest of Azen Radokh as a Divine Caster but beyond that nothing they could trust.

So, when they make this move, this deception, it must be in the most desperate, pitched and chaotic of fights possible. A grand battle of such ferocity where they know at minimum Orm won’t be worried about his toy, and looking more towards his grand plans. They need to be as sure as they possibly can, and that’s a tight rope to walk. But this group is what Azen Radokh could put together to attempt it.

So getting a schedule for this series has been a horrid endeavor. On the plus side, this series finale is next, and is mostly putting things into a compact format more recognizable for ACKS Judges. After this series I may share some efforts for a grander project I am cooperating with others on, but time will reveal that later. Thank you for joining me on this small project.

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As a general rule of thumb, try to treat the machinist like a off-beat and tougher Mage from the core rules. Your “Spells” however aren’t limited by how many you can cast per day, but instead limited by timing and your ability to carry supply1 for your “Wand” in the form of fuel and ammunition. In addition, as a dwarf and a d6 HD class your “Caster” is tougher and can take a beating better than a mage. Finally to round it off you also can do extremely well against any traps and locks. If you are playing a game where you can rope in a person to play a thief class, I recommend highly pairing the class with the Delver class from By This Axe. It’s the trap finding and recon to the Machinist’s trap busting and infiltration. Together they’re a dream team that a dungeons traps, doors and obstacles fall apart in front of.

A 2nd thing to take note of, gold is gonna be tight, as most likely your first big purchase will be using your loot to buy workshops, libraries and tools to improve your personal automaton. There may be dwarven vaults nearby that changes this but that’s the default. This can be hard to balance between all the other things ACKS offers players to purchase but if you can find a way to make it work, the Automatons can become a central pillar of the play group.

I briefly mentioned it briefly before; pay attention to the timing I mentioned. This includes reloading, refueling and repositioning. While timing is normally critical to a Mage or any other caster class as it determines the earth shattering impact the class has on any combat, for a Machinist, you have multiple of these earth shattering impacts. And if you can get a rhythm going with your party and combat, you’ll be slinging out whatever “Spell” you have every single combat, or perhaps twice per combat. Whereas a Mage with the sleep spell can take down a small squad of enemies in the dungeon, a Machinist in the right time, in the right place, can put down 2 squads before the enemy even closes to melee range. Figure out what works for your group and your specific build.

A final subject to think over, is figuring out alternative means of gathering capital and material for your Automatons. I mentioned bits of it earlier in that the DM having dwarven lands nearby changes the dynamic a bit, however to expand on that you also need to think in terms of fallen dwarven lands to scrounge whatever you can. Any fallen dwarven stronghold is potentially tens of thousands in samples, perhaps workshops, blueprints or even a decommissioned hull that could be re-commissioned for use in your own party. This is a huge money maker for any wayward Machinist with or without Guild support nearby, but there is also the consideration of selling to buyers in exchange for some startup investment if you can swing local power over to your side. This is a possible option as Machinists are rare, moreso than even mages who may be able to fulfill some of the same requests as a Automaton. However you get there, you can be assured that however you play your Machinist you will always have want of coin.

To finish, we’ll be going over the personal automatons and proficiencies most players will be using, going down the line of templates from By This Axe.2 For most I can offer a paragraph or two at most as I haven’t yet played with or seen all of them in play as of yet. Most of them are simple while leaving plenty of room for growth.

The first template is the Scavenger, and is the bottom of the barrel due to it being a Houseless caste start. Which hurts with gaining other automatons through a vault or guild. Best to be played as mainly a ranged support character until the player can get their hands on more automaton designs, or money to make a new personal automaton. The Clock-worker itself as a automaton is useless in direct combat, but having it work as a combat casualty retriever is likely it’s best use in dungeon, or a torchbearer.

Another possibility is potentially leaning on its ability for craft and labor inside the dungeon with barricades or traps along with the Scavenger templates Craft: Carpentry being at Master (3 Ranks). This is a rare use case, but potentially party saving.

The second template is the Apothecary, this one is specialized around the Dwarven brewing proficiency heavily, meaning that the optimal way to play this is likely to just lean into that. Stock up on as much brewed mushroom brews as you can and use the Clock-worker to carry spare of that brew. Alternatively, have it carry the torch and light military oils in between mushroom beers. Once some coin is acquired, getting a variety of brews to help heal, buff and deal damage is the immediate priority.

The third template is the Mechanic; this one loses out on being as immediately useful as the Apothecary due to proficiencies, though you still have the Clock-worker. But if you are playing a game where you are expecting to find Automaton wrecks or remains of them this is the “Get them back up and running and fight” template, and follows the previous advice from the previous two templates.

As well, this class is also uniquely positioned for growth in the 1-4th level area as Craft: Blacksmith can be used for the building of new automatons and has a faster build rate than level 1-4 machinists can muster. Overall, not the most immediately useful template but great for reclamation and building fast.

For the fourth template we no longer have the Clock-worker, though this is the oddest template to start with as a Machinist, the Aero-wright. This is due to the Flying Fire-pack, which is a great tool for two things for a brave or bold 1st level machinist. Closing on the rear or flanks of a enemy, or gaining a greater positional advantage such as heights, choke points that are hard to access or otherwise.

If in terrain types that have verticality or hard to reach treasures, use the advantage Aero-wright gives. If you have the proficiency slots for it, grabbing mountaineering would also allow for the Aero-wright to help lay climbing lines and help the party over rough terrain. Once treasure is accumulated, a miniature party automaton air-force is a force to be reckoned with.

The fifth template is the Motorist with the Tinkering and Driving Proficiency, if you wish to play a Machinist who levels up into a extremely speedy automaton producer, this is the template for it. In particular the Tinkering proficiency allowing for double the HD to be built by the Machinist helps with making automatons that can carry heaps of cargo or people which can be profitable.3

The only thing notable with the automaton for the Motorist is that the proficiency Driving and driving on roads will push this automaton from a daily movement of 54 miles per day to double that at 108 miles per day. Going from 9 hexes to 18 hexes is pretty useful after the first adventure typically as the Motorist can speed to a large market to move small items. Think magic items needing identifying and sold, or perhaps rare herbs or other such things the party can’t access in a Class VI market. Maybe selling some jewelry as well. If the Motorist can get some cash or party investment, upgrading this personal automaton to carry the party, either by customizing it themselves, or upgrading to the Mechanical Carriage is a great way of getting the party to be speedy without needing a herd of light horses. Maybe even as battle automaton, making a party mobile fortress.

The sixth template is the one I have the most play-time with, the Artillerist. This one is a prime combat Machinist, and this is the one where I felt the most the timing I mentioned earlier using the Dwarf Portable Mechanical Ballista. The automaton that comes with this template is one of the most powerful personal automatons. With the Precise shooting helping with firing over or past allies mainly as this weapon is a proper artillery piece. With a range of 480’ the absurd part of this automaton is that the range listed is it’s short range. Multiplying by 2 for it’s medium range and by 3 for it’s long range, this Automaton can reach out and touch someone at 1440’. If you can see it, this automaton can hit it and honestly outranges most encounter distances even in the wilderness4.

This goes together with the damage output of 2d6 in a 5’ radius means that any hit hurts low HD monster bands hard, and will wound anything higher HD decently enough. For best usage of this automaton and template, a party willing to find a spot to hold and bring the enemies to it as best fitting. Vault-guards making a solid line while the automaton spits out death, with crossbows on standby for anything that lives after getting hit. If you don’t think you can get a 2nd reload using the automaton in a fight, drop it and take up a crossbow, otherwise its 6 rounds of reloading your automaton.

The seventh template is the one I have the 2nd most playtime with it’s automaton, the War Machinist. This one is a line fighter, though a 2nd line line fighter. Take up spears or polearms and fish for big damage from the 2nd line and keep up with the Vault-guards. Pretty simple template and tactics, though 20 stone of carrying capacity on the Bronze soldier makes it also a decent treasure hauler, or carrying out armored and wounded dwarves quickly. Just don’t let the Bronze Soldier go down as it’ll be broken and you’ll be out of a automaton for a week or two. If its a important fight though, sacrifice it in any bid to preserve the Machinist and fellow PCs. Had some good fun doing that though.

The last template is the Artificer which has lower combat prowess. The template being Highborn or former Highborn has it’s specialization focus more towards diplomacy than combat. The proficiencies lean more towards utility as well, with Collegiate Wizardry helping the party out with identification purposes and Experimentation being a proficiency to grow into with research later down the line.

As to the Automaton itself and it’s uses in the dungeon, that depends on which of the 4 is selected and largely is useful in the same way any 1st level spell is for mages. Though again with automatons, as long as you have the fuel, it can keep being used throughout the adventure. Which for some contraptions is pretty useful such as detect magic, helping with both finding magical items during combat to focus fire on their users, and after the fight to verify anything pulled from the treasure room or packs of the enemies. The Pneumatic Boots have much the same usage as the Flying Fire-pack, though greatly lessened.

That’s all for this article, that about covers the biggest shift in thinking with the machinist, along with notes on playing it at early levels as compared to other classes. In the near future be on the lookout for more Automaton articles as I have a long backlog of material on them to share.

So going from last article, our force here is a bit off kilter. Not a full dwarf army, not a full rollout of either of the Guilds involved. But leadership is needed for all 3 elements here. So we’ll do this as character creation as in the Revised Rulebook1 and start rolling our stats. We’ll be using Machinists, Excavators and Vault-guards for our leadership as any casters would be breaking their oaths on a job like this, and there’s no reasons forthcoming for any of the other martial dwarf classes.

First let’s start with a Vaultguard, as our level 5 from the Demographics.

STR 14, INT 13, WIL 8, DEX 7, CON 12, CHA 11. HP 27

Not a standout genius, but pretty decent. Unremarkable but tough.

Next comes template and amazingly, the dice land on Besieger. Wonderful, and being 5th level does get him Battlefield Prowess as well so actually leading on the field will be a bit easier. Banging out proficiencies, class powers and magic items2 we get a total line up as follows.

Class Powers: Manual of Arms, Battlefield Prowess.
Proficiencies: Dungeon Bashing, Siege Engineering, Command, Leadership.
Magic Items: Potion of Discern Invisible, Scroll of Creature Warding, Potion of Angelic Aura.

Tough, well rounded, a bit above average in the intelligence area and mostly defensive items. How apropos. I added a little bio for as follows, along with his name

Kulden Breth
Bio: Although not a standout of his generation, Kulden was chosen mainly for his toughness than anything else. Being smarter than the average warrior has helped cement his choice as the leader of the Expeditionary Forces.

Next up is the Excavator, leading the Sappers and Siege Miners. Level 3 does get him Dowsing, but otherwise nothing substantial.

However what are substantial is the favor of the gods on this dwarves stat rolls.
STR 8, INT 16, WIL 16, DEX 15, CON 15, CHA 17. HP 16.

Immediately after rolling that we hurry to the templates and proficiencies because this is a absolute monster of a character. We get the Auger template, and the details of this expedition become a bit clearer to us
Class Powers: Attention to Detail, Expert Caving, Loadbearing, Prospecting, Pyroclastics, Dowsing.
Proficiencies: Weapon Focus (Polearm), Manual of Arms, Leadership, Knowledge Geology
Magic Items: Oil of Sharpness

Finally, I felt a bit inspired. What drives a dwarf like this out into the world at the head of near half his guild? Why send him? Well, you’re making a bet and stacking the deck. For a bit of details I came up with

Hrodar Talorgen
Scion of Clan Talorgen, Hrodar is the foremost expert of his generation in the Mining Arts and was chosen as well for his toughness likely to see him survive this expedition. Brave, bold and charismatic, Hrodar leads the Excavator section and though not the strongest miner, he leads strongly enough to make up for any weakness. And where strength is still needed, he has mastered his chosen weapon with technique.

Onto the last 3rd level officer. He’ll be leading the Machinist forces and this character probably dictates the tactics and strategy of the dwarven expedition the most. Which is why it’s surprising the dice did not favor him this day and gave him this.

STR 11, INT 16, WIL 6, DEX 15, CON 11, CHA 11. HP 9

Smart, but pretty uninteresting in every other respect. HP was also not exceptional at only 9. Template however rolled up as an Aerowright. Very odd but got me an angle how to build the rest of this expedition force out. As a Aerowright and 3rd level we end up with

Class Powers: Attention to Detail, Craft(Aerowright), Ballistics Expertise, Automaton Crafting/Designing/Building Power, Mechanic Knowledge, Personal Automaton (Flying Firepack), Siege Engineering
Proficiencies: Inventing, Navigation, Military Strategy, Signaling
Magic Items: Spell Scroll, Divine, Dwarven, Bane Rune and Frighten Beast

Let’s tie the leadership in a neat bow with a background. His stats and template don’t strike me as “Greatest of his generation” but also not the bottom rung. 2nd favorite student perhaps. Most likely he’d be one of 3-4 Apprentices of the Guildmaster but let’s go with something to prove for that.

Syrik Domekh
Syrik is one of the apprentices of Arsic Domekh, head of the Machinists guild, and while not seen as the ideal successor, this expedition was chosen as somewhat of a rite of passage and test for the dwarf. A Aerowright by trade, he mainly concerns himself with the sky, and his trade has affected the Automatons retrieved from deep storage, favoring vertical movement.

While I’m detailing names, here’s the Clans of Azen Radokh I’ve been able to find going off of By This Axe. I’ll detail a article for names, history of clans and others in the future but if you need to roll any individual for this expedition, one of these 5 clans suffices.

Alright let’s start the motivations, and here is where my reading of By This Axe, along with being a player in a Borderlands with the great from Arbiter of Worlds, from Annals of the North and others, have given me a basic set of motivations and ideas to go off of.

The dwarves of Azen Radokh have been under Orm’s rule since the fall of Azen Kairn in 225 BE3, about 500 years. They’re also not dead yet, so they can stuff the indignity of the situation down enough to follow the orders Orm sets out. We also know the dwarves don’t particularly like being slaves or being forced to do anything.4

So back to our expedition, We don’t have any clues to Orm ever going to war with the Aurans, or with the Elves before them. That meaning, this is the first of a kind thing Orm would ever call the dwarves upon for. For the dwarves that’s a big risk, a woe upon them for this means a end to the nice trades potentially with the Aurans, and a opportunity. A risk that they perhaps don’t make the right moves and Orm decides a culling is needed. For the Aurans, seeing dwarven troops assaulting a Fort on the line or elsewhere is gonna be a huge hit to the trade sector, no matter how much the dwarves tell them they don’t have much choice. And finally a opportunity.

This is the first time in 500 years the dwarves can openly maneuver their forces, observe beastmen forces in a variety of combat scenarios against a similar force to themselves, and potentially take greater risks either against Orm or for themselves. Loot, information, testing of combat theory, or just a insurance policy in the form of a group of Azen Radokh dwarves escaping Orm’s grip.

So what do we see as a potential best plan for the dwarves with this in mind? They do their job, but keep a eye out for any opportunity with Orms eyes occupied by the maps and moves he needs to make. Come to the field with your records showing a good portion less than what you can actually do, and when the opportunity comes, commit wholly to either breaking Orm or breaking away.

As well for our set of leaders, this works in their favor. They’re a smart bunch, and they’re tough. Without Azen Radokh committing even more resources, resources they can sorely let go of, this is a pretty good set of leaders to attempt this mission. Kulden Breth and Syrik Domekh both are good at their jobs, and Hrodar Talorgen binds the group together.

We can go over how to commit to trickery and duplicity next article, but that’s the plan for the dwarves, do their job well until the moment they can commit to disappearing in the chaos of war. Whether they strike from the chaos or fade into the mountains far away from Orms grasp is a question of circumstance

The final part of leadership and motivations is the tools at hand, and the greatest tool they have will the the automatons. So let’s go over that.

As hinted by our Machinist officer, Syrik Domekh, the designs that will help the dwarves to do their job the most will be designs leveraging vertical movement. Including interestingly for formations in Domains at War, subterranean.

The limiting factor to this formation, won’t be material costs, nor fuel costs, it will be the ability to maintain them in the field. Orm can handle the fuel costs, call it the cost of the machines to him, and it’s not that great anyhow. For the material costs, at 220gp of automaton value per family5, there are hundreds of automatons worth of value in the boneyards and motor pools of Azen Radokh at 630,190gp.

First step for us will be finding how much can we actually maintain, before just assigning a grand fleet to this expedition. Our numbers are 15 Machinists, plus the officer. We’ll split the 15 non officers into 7 1st level machinists, and 8 2nd level machinists.

Now Machinists don’t work year round, 250 days of the 365. We’re looking more at a month to month performance so we put it at 5 days a week. This we multiply by each machinists build rate to find how much the force can maintain.

At 5gp per 1st level, 7gp per 2nd level and 15gp for Syrik, we end up with a nice weekly breakdown as such.

Now our goal is verticality. For aerial forces, two automatons stand out for a small, specialized force. The first, to gain aerial recon, is the Auto-Gyro6, the Eagle variant in this case, as it is only 10gp more per week to maintain.

The 2nd, and the one in the greatest numbers for the expedition, is the Flying Firepack7. With our costs being limited to maintenance and not build costs, we can take a good number of them. Enough to get a squad of sappers or shock-troopers on top of a fortification in less than a minute.

The final key to this is our subterranean verticality. And for this I have to unveil a custom creation, as By This Axe has no default burrowing machines. Just as well, as some things were changed in ACKS II (I will go over that in the future).

To be brief, this is a platoon size transport, able to get through or under fortress walls and disgorge it’s cargo. Though the dwarves will be showing off it’s capabilities a bit more muted than this next article, it can also transport a great deal of sensitive supplies if needed, at faster than the marching heavy infantry, able to dig it’s own outposts or stores underground in the bedrock. It can’t dig tunnels in loose dirt but it can burrow through it so anything permanent or more importantly, anything to hide the dwarves away, will need to be in stone. With this final automaton our maintenance schedule looks as such.

We fit all of our automatons into the timeframe of a week by week basis, with 5gp to spare.

With this our force now has a role. Get in, raise hell, take key positions, and either get out or get out of the way of the beastmen who come rampaging in behind them. Or insert the beastmen directly in front of enemy command and control. Choices aplenty really.

But we’re really only halfway there for making this a true fortress breaking unit. Next article we’ll tackle that, with Tactics, Logistics and Duplicity.

Skip to the 4th article in the series if you just want the things needed to run this unit or the crunchy details, the first 3 will be dealing with how I arrived to the end product.

Harrowed’s request was something along the lines of “What fortress breakers would Orm try to call up from the dwarves when he starts making moves.” Perfect job for the Machinists and Excavator classes.

So, to start, we’ll be using the domain sheet of Azen Radokh from Capital of the Borderland as is. While it is made from before By This Axe and some new mechanics, it’s still a decently sized domain due to the Urbanization it enjoys. At 780 peasant families and 905 Urban families we get a total of 1685 families.

This is the first step as this helps us get the following. The number of Machinists available, the rough garrison costs to give us a rough number of troops to send on this Call to Arms, and finally to plug it into demographics of Demi-Humans to figure out how many leaders we could have and possible knock on effects.

To address these in order, Azen Radokh would have roughly 37 Machinists in the entirety of the Domain, using the Availability of Automaton numbers1. We’ll say Orm takes half a platoon. Enough to appease Orm, enough to recover from losses in time, and enough to get something decent out of deep storage and getting on the war path.

In addition to using this number for Machinists, I also peg the Excavator class at the same rarity. So again 15 excavators. Excavators are the sappers to the Machinists artillery.

I’ll peg both of these as 1st level henchmen for wages as I don’t know how you’d qualify wages for these multi-experts whom can build siege works, use explosives and more. Keep things nice and simple for now.

So 40% of both the Machinists Guild and the Excavators Guild are going to war. A mighty sum indeed of both institutions but not cripplingly so given they can take new apprentices and don’t have to worry about losing anymore for decades on after this.

Next we have the Call to Arms. Call to Arms as a favor to a vassal typically is 2gp per family, which in our case comes out to a neat and tidy 3370gp in soldiers. I say typically as we are doing a odd thing here as well, having Machinists and their Automatons go off to war. But I will get to that in the next installment, as first I have to explain how I got to the troop numbers I got to.

Now I have yet to publish or share, but I have been working on a standardized set of domain sheets for dwarven domains and also figuring out how to fit garrisons, the taxes, mushroom farming, strongholds, all of it, into how it all fits together with the lore provided in By This Axe. That project has been ongoing for awhile and I am now very familiar with dwarven garrison sizes, or what at least strikes me as reasonable and smart for the dwarves and thus I have a garrison for Azen Radokh ready to go.

Roughly the garrison follows the standard I have as such

A note before continuing on. The large number of militia are from the Revised Rulebook2, in that all dwarven domains have a strong martial tradition and have 2gp of militia per family. Thankfully this doesn’t apply to our situation but do make note of it.

Now we have 3370gp to grab out of this, plus the 750gp in wages from all our Machinists and Excavators. So let’s go with this, cut out the Dwarven Heavy Infantry B from this, and take everything but the Trained Militia and the aforementioned HI B. Thus the force will be a dwarven doctrine standard3 force of 1 platoon Dwarf HI A, 1 platoon Dwarf Crossbowmen, 1 platoon Dwarf Mounted Crossbows. This is a decent but oddly weighted force. But we’ll get to that in a later issue, for now this works.

I have a lot of different demographic models I need to detail at a later time but for now we’ll go with this simplified version.

Azen Radokh is on the larger side of a average county4, but as we can see, plenty enough leveled characters to get us a 5th level leader, and some 3rd level officers for the limited forces. Things get a bit sparse at 5th level but this will play into the next article.

Next article we’ll go over Leadership in detail, Motivations, and Automatons chosen based on those merits. I’ll see about making these a weekly feature, or at least semi-regular. After that, it’ll be Tactics, Logistics and Duplicity, and the final one will be a nicely wrapped article with all the things for running this unit.

Anyhow here is a list of things I learned in the time spent thus far DMing my own game, starting with the playtest versions of ACKS II after having learned a good chunk of the rules as a player. A note as well, I did not start with novice players but those well versed in ACKS and it’s mechanics as well as having the ruleset changing during play, approximately from v127-155 thus far.

I think I’ll start with general approach to things, and then cap off with what procedures I’ve found most helpful in ACKS

1. Limit your scope, both your own and your players. As a DM, your own preparedness for the campaign overall is dictated by the first, and your week to week preparation is dictated by the latter. For your own scope, I highly recommend you just grab Capital of the Borderlands, and Sinister Stone of Sakhara, and you will largely be concerned by your players ambitions and you’ll have a easy time of slowly learning the rules, and can take your time digesting the ACKS Setting Building Process if you so choose to build your own on the side. However, if you’re a new DM, new to ACKS DMing or just plain stubborn. Here is my advice.

   You will need, absolutely need, to limit both your own action and the players. Yes, ACKS is a game centered around a sandbox experience. Yes, ACKS does making things quickly and easily great. But it isn’t instantaneous. And unless your players are very understanding and actually dedicate themselves to doing what you do set up for this initial game, you will fall behind. ACKS is a great toolset that takes time to learn, and all the time you need to learn, get processes understood and implemented will slowly lose the battle, no matter how familiar you are with ACKS rules. So you will need to constrain yourself to a dungeon you either make, or grab off the shelf and will need to constrain your players to that dungeon. If they try and wander 80 miles in any given direction, end the session there and tell them to come back in 2 weeks time. This will suck. This will end any rhythm the game has going. But for a new DM trying to do their own setting, while learning the rules, this is crucial. I know some DMs likely start DMing as they wish to make their own setting and use their own ideas and that’s great. But it’s gonna be overwhelming. This is where the classic Old-school game advice of 3 dungeons, 1 town, and similar advice is probably most felt and applicable.

   For the players scope, ACKS has a very very broad switchboard of things players can do. You’re gonna have to limit it. I recommend keeping it to the ACKS II Revised Rulebook only class wise, and only let them break out the campaign rules after a good dozen sessions. If a player requests otherwise, only allow one class or rule set per player. As well you will get requests from players to let them decide henchmen classes when they level up from 0 to 1. I allowed this. That was a mistake. I recommend you do not follow. It may allow some great fun for players, but some classes bring more rule checking than others and I would recommend against adding to your plate at this point.

2. You will get faster, fast. ACKS does make this easy, and can be also easily automated via excel or other script tools. There are some tools in the ACKS Community that can help lift alot of the heavy weight, but also making your own tools is a crucial skill to immediately start practicing. Snip and copy paste tables onto a excel spreadsheet along with your encounter table for the evening. Note specific details unlikely to change like the climate code for the area if you use the weather rules (Fairly easy 3 sets of 2d6). Don’t be discouraged by continually flipping between rules. You’ll eventually need to less and less.

3. Don’t be afraid to change rulings. While typically as a DM you want to be consistent with your rulings, I have learned its worse to live with a ruling mistake than come back later and remand earlier statements. Some stuff will be on the spot as rules are not being read correctly or in the correct context at the time, some stuff will be just not up to date depending on rule sets used and need updating. My point here being that by living with mistakes you’re affecting more of your game overtime.

And now for specific procedures that will immediately make things easier on you or add some more fun to your game.

1. Pre-Roll Encounters and Weather. Take 20 minutes before the session, roll out about 6 hours worth of encounters in dungeon, 3 days in wilderness and 3 days weather. This is easy, and also helps get prep for the session started(Or might be the entirety of it if the party is in a already prepped dungeon). If you don’t use any of it, just save it and put it aside for the next session. This is immensely useful for just having basic notes that you can adapt on the fly to circumstances without slowing down to roll the size of the encounter and other details like shamans, witchdoctors or guard animals.

2. Start up a note repository for NPCs. Organization now will save time later. Important notes will be level, location, name, and relations. Disposition and the like can be fairly easily added in during the game depending on what you feel and how players interact, or alternatively easily added in when looking over a area.

3. The secret formula to ACKS combat being highly cinematic and also testing player endurance is remembering the dungeon is alive, and enemies are not dumb. To do this there’s a couple of ways but the easiest and the one you’ll have the most success with, is wave style warfare. Space out your enemies in a large enough room that there’s a 2nd group around the bend, or far off, or something to that effect. Make it roughly 30-80’ to get to this 2nd group, who will notice the melee the players start, and rush to reinforce. By time this 2nd group has formed up from every day tasks (1 round), and moved to join combat, the players should have the first fight roughly mopped up. By having this 2nd group join in, the remaining enemies now have a chance again, and player resources are stretched. Perhaps the players don’t have the HP, or the Mage is now out of spells, or they don’t have enough military oil now or are awkwardly positioned to use it. In any case, this will stress the players to stick it out, or retreat. Maybe a PC goes down, or a henchmen. But this will be where players will feel the stakes, and the enemy is both manageable and dangerous. You can evolve this over time as you employ the listening rules and start to space out patrols and guard posts in reasonable distance to hear combat elsewhere, but for now this works great.

4. Individual initiative. You will find any combat your play without this to largely be who wins the roll, and your game will suffer for it. Only do group initiative’s when it is a large battle, with more than 40 enemies on the monsters side. And only in groups of 2-5. This is critical to making sure combat goes nicely, fun, and appropriately heroic. Do not neglect this rule.

5. Anything the players can do, so can the monsters. ACKS monsters aren’t stupid by and large, and will adapt to players. Too many patrols going missing with survivors telling tale of adventurers? Group up the tribes champions into a ambush. Military oil ruining the monsters day? Throw some their way and watch as their stockpile of 30 bottles of military oil explode. Or just throw a torch onto their cache. Note, this isn’t advice to be antagonistic as a DM, this is to make the challenge evolving and testing of player skill. I think we can agree having a fuel bunker inside a dungeon probably isn’t a great idea for the monsters, why would the players? And this might lead to your players adapting in turn, and learning to fight better. Maybe they start leading their hellfire military oil bombardment from stealth. Or leading the enemy into ambushes where they light a fuse and watch as entire patrols go up in flame.

   This is where I have fun with ACKS, and having this continually evolving combat, with changing enemies and ways to approach problems, and I aim to have this occur for my players.

6. Roll up treasure even before session for lairs and warbands, distribute magic items among leadership. I’ll admit to having forgotten this a few times and it does scratch me the wrong way when the beastmen chieftain who could have done more when he had a magic sword or shield in his storage room just decided not to bring it out today. You don’t have to roll all the treasure, but the magic items do enhance and give variation to enemies.

At some point I think I will detail the experience further, but for now this is my collection of points I would have used at least some of myself at the beginning. I hope someone finds some of these points useful.

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We resume with the interrogation of the 3 orc survivors. Initially they tried bargaining for freedom. Ur-Akesh brooks no negotiation from beastmen prisoners, merely their lives. So they spill what they know, which includes how many in their gatehouse. Twenty more orcs in the side halls, and a handy thing is they won’t be expecting back this group for few hours.

Also some words about things to expect deeper within Blackstone. The Lake Door apparently is somewhere deeper within the “Irontooth” territory. And apparently that’s a group the orcs never want to cross. As for why.

The group doesn’t know how to take this one, and the orcs don’t know much more of this group. But in the meantime, the group sees a opportunity. A plan is quickly muttered amongst all. Delvers to the fore, seeking to exploit the lack of care. If they can find the snores they hear on one side without finding any awake orcs, to slit the sleeper's throats. If they encounter any trouble, the rest of the party to advance with military oil, and shield to arrow slits.

All goes well, the delvers nearly tripping up at one point but going left at a intersection and going through a bone curtain reveals 5 sleeping orcs. A nod is shared and 5 orcs are given eternal sleep. All is going well, until a surprise bathes the delvers in light and awaken the remaining 5 orcs.

Foli the delver rasps out quickly to military oil the orcs while they awake, and Ehlokos the delver agrees and both light and toss at the orcs. A whistle cries out from Ehlokos’s lips for the rest of the party to do their part.

Down the hall the party hefts shield, hammer and axe and begin their march down the hall. Military oils are thrown, stuffed or jammed into arrow slits, torches thrown to ignite their contents and shields are jammed by one and another dwarf as they move down the hall in sequence.

In the meantime the Delvers successfully set alight two, who start screaming in pain. Another 2 are hit with fire, though only one successfully alights. The final is put to rest by hammer and axe. Though a new problem assails them, the hay has caught fire and the flame is hot indeed feasting off hay and body. But once more they are reminded of the dwarven runes aglow.

Shouting through a arrow slit to the rest of the party the left side was mopped up, the two delvers nodded to one another before heading through the rune glowed door. They find a spiral staircase that leads to a large room above with seemingly nothing within it. The delvers part of the battle is over.

Meanwhile below them the others rush along to the intersection. Ahead of them a group of orcs come out of the right sideroom and spot them, and the dwarves crash into their formation.

The fight is ended when the final 3 orcs are taken down by Knurd, the earthforger. Note this is due to a custom homebrew invocation that induces saves vs vomitting. After the fight wraps up via prisoner taking, the party links back up with the gatehouse now secure explores the upper gallery. Empty, and untouched by the orcs the only things of note are long rusted and rotted ballista bolts and gate mechanisms alongside the bones of a dwarf, a note

A password to the machinist guild, a hidden safe spot, and about 1,500 gold in loot not counting the captives makes this one of the most successful level one adventures I’d ever been a part of as a player. The group uses a length of linen to blindfold the orcs, and disorienting them before leading them up so we can settle down for the night. Theres some chittering and mawing of bodies during the night but no troubles otherwise. Before the group leaves Urist the machinist wraps up the bones of the ancestor machinist in linens, depositing them gently in his backpack to be attended to back at camp. As well some additional gems and 1,000 more electrum pieces scattered about that takes us time to bag.

With that the group heads back towards base camp, two days there laden with loot and captives. However that very same day something odd is heard.

Immediately the draconic creatures are recognized as wyverns, and the party descends into a intense debate. Settle with what they have, or charge towards glory and riches. Some of the ways of putting how insane this course of action was pretty entertaining.

The group decides of course on digging deeply and greedily into this opportunity. The captives are to hold the loot incase of needing to run, everyone lines up with ranged weaponry of arbalest, bow and automaton. And then the group waits for the two sides to fight one another to weakness. If either side won with overwhelming superiority, the dwarves of Ur-Akesh would likely fall easy prey to these predators. Luck however held as the two sides battled.

With only one wyvern remaining, the party nodded amongst themselves. Riches beyond means with one fight with a weakened chaotic creature. The choice was obvious.

Before the beast can even close, bolts find their homes. The creature crashed from the cliff cave’s lip to the forest floor below, and we celebrated our victory as one aught.

To say the party felt incredulity and the rush of victory in equal measure was a understatement. Right away, delvers laid lines up the cliff face as they climbed skywards to the Wyvern’s cave, while those below formed up into a defensive ring around the glorious kill. And soon enough shouts and cries of mirth reach those below, who add themselves to the climbing lines before ascending to surveil the riches with the others.

Eggs, and three of them to boot already has the party dreaming of such a glorious return to the camp that their names would reach the poets and skalds lips faster than the greatest of steeds. And that is without touching upon the other shiny things within the cave

Soon enough the party had ceased their cheering and celebrating long enough to take the diamonds from the earth’s embrace, bodies were butchered for their parts (Unfortunately not enough encumbrance to around to take the whole bodies for butchering) and packs rearranged so the dwarves can reach camp tomorrow. Nothing goes awry in this stage, and it is a wonder it did not with such bounty flowing from purses and sacks. Though the return was not as expected

And we end here for now. Our intrepid reclaimers of Blackstone found more success than I’ve ever seen a 1st level group ever have on their first delve. Admittedly shallow delve, but when success was total, why push farther in when you can instead rearm better for the task at hand. The chance encounter with wyverns and skittering maws was beyond lucky, though the ramifications of our victory over them will echo throughout the rest of the campaign, as great victory means great expectations from the Clan.

What do you guys think? Too lucky, too easily run by the DM, sufficiently ballsy enough for the reward gained? You have any stories of similar wild success from 1st level characters?

Selection Section

The following vote options were to help flesh out the backstory of the dwarven clan the players are a part of (Or not), and helped develop some mechanical edges we wished to excel in. It was a fun collaborative background creation that would help consolidate the players.

1. Singular clan - originally from Blackstone (united in purpose, pick a single ancestor who determines your principle trade, acceptable for you to take Blackstone but you have been considered beggars recently)

2. Singular clan - not from Blackstone (similar to 1 but vaguely considered usurpers)

3. Mixed clans (pick three specialties, but can hit issues with clans disagreeing)

4. Completely mixed displaced group (no specialty but no penalties)

All of these are beholden to an clan leader or king who has funded your expedition.

The players chose option 1, unanimously.

These specialties would count the base camp as being 1 Market Class higher and the weaknesses 1 Market Class lower. They may also unlock certain details or knowledge.

Your specialty was:

1. Animal Husbandry

2. Armoursmithing

3. Brewing

4. Combat

5. Constructs

6. Goldsmithing

7. Mechanics

8. Mining

9. Mycology

10. Toolcrafting

11. Weaponsmithing

12. Jewelcrafting

There was also a vote for a corresponding vote for the clan weakness. None of these advantages were to be a free lunch, and strengths corresponded to responsibilities and duties as much as weaknesses hurt mechanically. It’s a interesting mechanic, one I am unsure if a live session game could remember these bonuses and weaknesses in real time. Anyhow for the result we had the following mechanical bonus and background.

As the game would progress this boon helped reinforce our playstyle of intense aggression in play. I don’t think it helped in any cases but it certainly helped frame a mindset of aggression in the players that would pay dividends. As for the weakness

This one has yet to be used as constructs haven’t been encountered but I imagine it will be devastating when a pair of constructs come for the party.

After this the party was given a let’s call it a political difficulty level we could choose. Essentially choose the type of leader the clan falls under and what duties we could expect to need to uphold. To quote

The options were

1. Thuringar the Hammer - The current leader of your clan. Young, impetuous and a fan of drinking, smashing orc skulls and wooing women in the dwarven realms. He has a strong focus on going for the biggest, most violent foe with very little planning. It's worked for him so far.

2. Queen Stranga - Blackstone's newest Queen in Exile. Stranga believes that Blackstone is permanently lost and is merely seeking to recover artefacts and coinage to give her people a new home and a new standard of living.

3. King Dorgal the Elder - Some say that Dorgal was born old, others say that it's just because he's outlasted all his enemies. Dorgal is king of the Silverdeep and is famed for his clever political maneuvering. This time is no different.

The party of course keeping with the clan specialty went with Thuringar the Hammer. By this point the general consensus as a party was “Aggression aggression aggression”. As for the result of said vote

Almost near the end of setup, we have some magical side stuff, clan name and emblem.
For the magical side stuff it was mostly in relation to the Gnostic magic of the dwarven classes

1. Belfa the Weighty - Known for her belief that a good defense is a good defense, Belfa's book has a focus on defensive magic.

2. Ghyran the Destroyer - Well loved for his ability to break beastmen, Ghyran's book has a focus on improving offence.

3. Tor the Earthen - It is believed that Tor spent a good deal of time amongst a hidden clan of Earthforgers, and his book has magic manipulating the earth and stone.

4. Orik the Onanist - Orik believed that the only weapon that could be relied on was oneself, and so created rituals that would solely benefit the caster. Orik was not particularly well liked but his ability to bowl down enemies was noted.
   

And the result!

And with that all is left is that of Clan name and emblem. And I’m just gonna include some quotes by players throughout this campaign to give you the mood, and because this. This stuff makes me smile. Oh also the groups symbol is a Lammasu.

With that all out of the way, onto the summarization.

We began off with some introductions. At that time, the player count and activity was very high for a play by post, though as typical for play by post games, we eventually thinned ranks down to about 4-6 dedicated players who still play. We had 2 craft-priests, 2 delvers, 4 Vaultguards, a Earthforger, a Fury and a Machinist. For those not familiar with ACKS dwarf classes, thats 2 clerics, 2 thief types, 4 fighters, 1 Gnostic caster, 1 berserker and what is roughly the equivalent of a mage except uses machinery aka the Machinist.

Our party also had a handler in the form of the base camps leader, a dwarven rhetor. Think bard crossed with dwarven lawyer. After some back and forth, and notably, no actual plan from management the party set off. On the way encountering a valuable terrain encounter, a field of birthwort, worth about 300gp. Marked on the map and the party continues on.

No other big events occur aside from a flight of Lamassu on the way to Blackstone. Reaching the eastern entrance it looks to be a gatehouse, with a road running up to its pinch point in the valley between two arms of the mountains. The party agrees to let the two delvers go ahead up the scree slope, as seemed like most aside from them would tumble loose great sections. A deliberate, clever alarm circumvented by two delvers, two orc guards are spotted.

As one they release arrows onto the guards, missing initially before one going down, the other getting clipped on his way scrambling inside the gatehouse. The party forms up at the orc corpse, noting sigils of its tribe. A few minutes pass waiting for the orcs to send something out before the group heads on ahead once more. Initially some arrow fire assaults the main grouping of vaultguards and the like before they turn back to the entrance, leaving the delvers to go on ahead. The gatehouse as it turns out is less gatehouse and more an arrow slit triathlon running an astounding 200' long with it being 20' wide. The delvers continue stalking through the corridor, hearing the orcs talk about the dwarves being pincushioned if they came through anymore. Some talk of a alternate entrance though the meaning unclear.

One of the earliest maps below.

The delvers continue on before overhear the orcs talking about how they’ll just wait until sundown before going back out to restack the perimeter. Well the delvers don’t think they wanna engage this far off from the group and returns. Talking things over the group decides upon having some vaultguards set up a false camp and a ambush while the machinists and other ranged firepower set up concealed positions. Takes about 20 minutes but the orcs come out, 11 to their number.

The vaultguards are spotted immediately when the chief and a few gangs come out to meet the dwarves.

Right as they’re about to engage the delvers pop out of cover and pepper the orcs with effective fire, before the vaultguards also lay in with whatever they have from range and some charge into the melee of the orcs spear bristling formation. Some return fire ensues but orcs are clustered around the chieftain. Bravak the vaultguard goes down in the melee, and Darik the vaultguard gets a good gouging in return for some damage and 2 downed orcs. Here is where Urist the Machinist pops out and hit the group of orcs center mass with the mechanical torsion ballista, these days going by the name of the dwarf portable mechanical ballista in By This Axe. 2d8 in a 5’ square drops the chieftain, most of the orcs and the remaining 3 orcs surrender having been seen their chieftain die and being brutalized by shrapnel. Bravak the Vaultguard is seen to and only has some noticeable scarring.

With that the initial battle is over, and interrogation begins.

With that I’ll leave things for next report. I had a lot more fun with this format than the actual play that I may just abandon posting the actual play format I did before. Aside from that what’s your guys thoughts on the pregame choices and effects? Would you use them in your games, or not? If so, how would you change things up?

The following Actual Play is from a game using primarily By This Axe in conjunction with the ACKS II Playtest material. Occasionally various Axioms were incorporated as well. In addition for this game the players got to choose the setup and strengths of their group that I enjoyed and may explore in detail later in another post. But for now we begin with the first introductions and adventure.

(DM)

     The return to the ancestral home of Blackstone has taken the party down a long and winding path. The first spark of the return was ignited in the eye of the clan's lord two years ago, undoubtedly shortly after he completed some wild feat of arms. The need to hire, equip and pay enough haulers, lesser trades-dwarves and other hangers on took a reasonable amount of preparation and searching, as even the delvers aren't often foolish enough to attempt to retake a city long fallen under the boot of beastmen.

The expedition travelled past Stormhead from the northern coast, steadily encountering more woodland and less farms. Blackstone rises in the distance, on this side a sheer black cliff face with a tiny grey dot at the base. This side is clear of snow, except for the pyramidal shape on top.

The expedition chose the north side for fear of the rumours of goblins riding dire wolves to the south. Camped in a tangle of rivers, protected from ambush on three sides but equally trapped if anything was to attack.

The camp is set up, fires carefully tended to create minimal smoke, and makeshift forges and workshops placed across the camp. (Camp: Your camp counts as a Class VI market for the purposes of purchasing goods.) Haulers and trades-dwarves will make the trips to Stormhead to buy goods when they are needed.

The party is, for an unencumbered dwarf, a day's travel from the northern side of Blackstone. With your party being as it is, it will likely take you two days.

The party knows each other reasonably well, so please introduce yourselves, and state your plans.

(Urist)
     Gathering around one of the many fires a machinist holding a miniature ballista with a unkept beard and hair and speaking with a cadence that annoys some speaks to the group, "Urist. Reclaim and restart the Machines the Ancestors left behind. Anything else....is a boon." With his piece said he nods and huddles back with his weapon before huffing and adjusting some gizmo or another on it.

(Knurd) 
     A scowling dwarf waves distractedly at the group before going back to overseeing the unloading of the outpost's alcohol stores.

(Lordek) 
     A Vaultguard with coal black hair and beard stands up. "You all know me, but for those that may be far into your tankards, I am Lordek, son of Baffin, son of Galen. Oathsworn. Vaultguard. Haggler. I am honored to stand with you as we reclaim our birthright. There are those that say reclamation is impossible, or not worth trying for, maybe not worth dying for. Some of these, many of these cowards, call us beggars - though not to our faces. When they come to pat us on the back, and try to reach into our pockets, I plan to make them pay double just for the honor of trading with us! May Ghyran smile upon us as we carve our way into Blackstone. Let the guidance of Tor bring us to victory. And let us be as Belfa, for once we are home, none shall move us again."

(Bravak)
     A vault guard that smells as if he hasn't touched water in months grunts as he stands. "Bravak, son of Dorit, son of Leddek stands before you and I will stand at the forefront for this glorious task."

(Darik)
     "I am Darik, the son of Dain, of House Talorgen of the First Clan. Other clans scoff at our exile, and even other exiles name us fools to return here, but they cannot understand. Battle is our birthright, and we exiles must prove our claim by blood shared or blood shed if we are to hold on to any honor left. Once we were great, champions and lords amidst the deep halls, and I will that it be so again. Let us set forth, brothers, and cast out the usurpers. Let us seek once more the strength and cunning of old within our bones, and by the ancestors we will prevail." The tall dwarf's piercing grey eyes flicker in the firelight as he smiles grimly and fingers his oft-notched axe.

(Ehlokos)
     A surly mountainsdwarf grunts, scratching his beard. “Less chat, more plan. Mountains don’t care fer idle mouths. “M’am alright there, but you all better watch yer footing.” He harrumphs and spits. “We get there, we watch. We see what’s happening, then we go in, seize some ground, get a few pris’ners, loosen’ a few tongues.” “Oh, m’names Ehlokos, been walk-in’ the mountains and fells since I was a whelp. Don’t care much fer talkin’.” And he goes silent, glaring about.

(Melcarn)
     A ragged dwarf with a shaven skull rolls up his sleeves, exposing the runes carved into his muscled arms. "Call me Melcarn, son of Gast. If our forefathers are with us we shall all find glorious death in their ancient halls. Should our comapny fail in this, perhaps we can find some small honor in restoring a part of Blackstone to its former glory."

(Ehlokos) 
     “Plan should be see if any of them in camp got any knowledge of the hills and way up. “Whether they do or not, we then get up the river and into the hills, and take a look ourselves” Ehlokos chews his teeth a minute, and falls silent again.

(Pharos)
     A vaultguard swings his spiked mace in the air and raises his shield at times in a clearing. Moving quite nimbly despite the plate armor and shield he was holding he fights imagined enemies. After a few minutes he breathes out a sigh and turns to a dwarf in charge of the camp warehouse. "No, this is too heavy. It affects my movements in battle." Saying this, he grabs 6 torches, a rope and 7 days worth of rations from his backpack and hands it over to the dwarf for safe keeping. The dwarf takes off his helmet revealing his straight red brown hair. He heads towards the group of dwarves discussing things. "Hey, I know you are all eager to reclaim our homeland but don't go stumbling from the start you hear? We gotta secure the camp or next thing you know we'll return battered and weary to a bunch of orcs!”

DM 
     The party have been sent with a dwarven rhetor (arguer of law) called Ledag. Scrawny, arrogant and overwhelmingly disliked, Ledig is nonetheless a close personal friend of Thuringar. He is currently directing a pair of harrished looking haulers, but he will undoubtedly turn his attention to the party shortly.

(Ehlokos) 
     “Base camps the camps job. I trust ‘em. We need to be up in the mountains, not down here”. He scratches his wiry beard and mat of hair, glaring out from his weather worn, creased face.

(Darik)
     "Let's set out then. I'm sure that's what Thuringar would want, and I'd rather not wait around to be told otherwise. Plenty of time for planning on the trek."

Urist Stuttering a bit "ShShouldnt we wait for whatever the Rhetor has to say? Mmighta learned from the Lord where some good places to hit are"

DM
     Ledig spots you looking at him. "What are you staring at?! If you expect me to direct your expedition, you are sorely mistaken. I am just here to make sure you don't spend all of Thurimar's money on cheap human beer and cheaper human whores. If anything important comes up, I'll tell you but otherwise pull your finger out and stop your badget baiting."
(Pharos)
     "Still be a bit heavy." Pharos calls over the warehouse dwarf and further hands him a crowbar, iron spikes, and hammer. Looking to the other dwarves he says. "Let's head to the mountains!" Saying this he steps towards the entrance of the camp.

(Bravak)
     "No one asked you anything Ledig." Bravak scowls in general. "Don't fall in the rivers while were gone." Bravak assumes his place in the front of the main column.

(Urist)
     Shrugging, the Machinist hefts his large weapon and readies to march with the others.

(Ehlokos)
     Grunting assent the mountains dwarf grabs his gear for a once over, stows everything for travel and steps out for a piss before coming back and grabbing a stew & hunk of bread in a mug for the road. 

(Melcarn) 
     Melcarn buckles on his belt of axes, spits on the ground in Ledig's general direction, and stands to march with the party. He stares up at the cloud-wreathed heights of Blackstone, wondering what hazards lie ahead.

DM 
     Your party readies themselves and starts up the winding paths that will take you to Blackstone itself. The sun is shining and the sky is clear, and you begin making exceptionally good time. The path seems to reach up to meet you step. You could reach the delve today if you desired and either camp very close nearby or enter into it. Along the way, you find a ruined flat stone base surrounded by a field of yellow trumpet-shaped flowers. (Hex: 1107) Ehlokos recognises them as a birthwort, commonly used to treat poisons. There is about 300gp worth of birthwort (30lb) but it would take an hour to harvest and would mean you would not be able to reach your destination today.

Editors Note
     The party briefly discusses making some gold immediately harvesting the birthwort but ultimately marks it on the map and continues on.

DM 
     The group proceed further up the hills, the terrain quickly growing steeper and more mountainous. A shadow passes overhead and the party could swear that, above them in the distance, is a small flight of lamassu going towards the centre of the range. A clear sign that the ancestors are shining on the party for the right choice. This side of Blackstone is steep and sharp, the mountain itself being a natural sheer face. You round the last bend and see, ahead, the large stone entryway. It is carved from the blackstone in the classic geometric patterns. However, surrounding it are piles of grey stones, carefully arranged everywhere except the direct path. Two humanoids laze outside the entrance, helmets half covering their faces. The party is around 200ft away.

I’ll be ending the first one here, next up is the melee for the gatehouse. I’ll be keeping these actual plays as compacted to adventures as I can. Have a great week everyone!

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First we’re going to have to figure out how big we’re going for this. Being an empire, the entirety of it can be said to be 4-6 Kingdoms all united under a High king. We’re going with 4 here today, 3 in the Meniri Mountains, 1 in the Jutting. Given the scope of our project, let’s just set aside 2 of those. One can be the Jutting Kingdom, one can be the far western kingdom in places such as Nicea, Opelenea and Kemesh. So we just have to build out 2 kingdoms, and place an empire capital. Easy.

Next is defining where these Kingdoms would be. For this, I’ve chosen to make a Meniri Mountain Kingdom, and a Drakonir Mountain Kingdom. The Drakonirs is a bit on the small side but the Meniri could stretch from the Krysea mountains to the Nicean mountains right before it hits the Achaean Mountains. If you really want an in-world reasoning for this, the Drakonir valley, and most likely it’s attendant mountains, would be ridiculously prosperous. All that nice rainfall breaking over the east Drakonir mountains and depositing right in that nice valley. Plenty of wood would grow, plenty of rain for terraces and easy trade. That and combined with the hills in Krysea and it’d fit just fine size wise in the overall dwarven empire. Here’s how it might look overall at the primer scale.

Next is to start roughly denoting the bounds. First, here’s the blank map, scrubbed of everything (To help with visualization).

Now let’s outline the Kingdoms on this map. The Drakonir Kingdom will look a bit strange but bear with me. Blue for the Drakonir Kingdom, red for the Meniri Kingdom.

Alright, now we start breaking these up into Principalities. The Drakonir kingdom will have 4, the Meniri kingdom will have 5 or 6 principalities, but only 3 principalities will be shown here; the east, the heartlands and the 3rd one in the west. The heartlands is where we’ll include the empire capital, so heartlands feels the most apt as a starting point. First the map and then some numbers as well as a key(9th column).

Now, we’re at a nice place for, as we simply need to add a couple capitals for each kingdom and principality, then just add in some county size vaults and we’re done. Which means we can now zone in. But I think I’ll leave that for the next article, exploring more of my thinking behind this.

Today we’ll be going over some basic generation work I’ve been doing to build out a skeleton to structure the region’s mountains. Using that skeleton we’re gonna build a entire dwarven empire in future articles, and then to get a result I want we’ll tear it down. Let’s get started.

Mineral Generation

In ACKS, and By This Axe specifically, we have a nice handy ruleset for generating deposits for minerals and ore deposits across 24 and 6 mile hexes pretty easily. You can just total up number of mountains (Or other hexes you might use such as hills and river adjacent hexes) and just start rolling d100s and chug through things. And that’s what I initially did, I just totaled up all the mountain hexes, numbered them and just threw 138 d100s and saw what the dice thought of the Meniri Mountains. And lo and behold, after maybe 20 minutes of work you’d have a perfectly serviceable map.

I didn’t keep this result. My result could be best described as “Shotgun blast”, with not many connections between deposits or areas. So we hit the planning board again, this time I came up with something close to a fellow ACKS DMs style of things. Something that screams of a empire than a spattering of kingdoms.

Essentially instead of doing in one great sum, we take a bit more time, a hour or two, and we divide the mountain ranges into sections.

• For this I divided it up as the Eastern Drakonir Mountains, Western Drakonir Mountains, the outlying areas detatched from the mountains, and finally the spine of the Meniri mountains, working my way outwards from said spine.

• Here we begin chugging through d100s, hitting first the Meniri spine, then the 1 layer of 24 mile hexes north and south of that, then the 2nd layer north and south of that layer and so on. Next the Eastern Drakonir, then the West Drakonir and finally the outlying areas.

• Through said method I’ve made a much nice looking base data set of which hexes at the very least would have ore deposits, laying ground for further extrapolation to base off.

• In blue dotted lines we have where I ended the Drakonirs, circles with triangles are the 24 mile hexes with deposits and the solid bright red line is the spine of the mountains.

Now that we have a rough view, it’s actually fairly easy for us to detail downwards. For our goal of building out a dwarven empire, we’ll want to be a bit more specific so I detailed downwards for another hour or two to help us determine where we would place the empire and vaults via which specific deposits. A diamond mine would be a great capital. This worked out nicely, giving us a nice spread of strategic and economic resources over the entirety of the mountain ranges. For the astute, you can already begin guessing where we would start seeing regional capitals, defense points, and outlying outposts .

Might be a bit hard to view here in detail, however in future articles we’ll be zooming in on regions as we build out the great dwarven empire. It’ll be easier on the eyes on a region by region basis. Then we can start blowing stuff up. But for mineralogy that will be all today.

I hope you’ll forgive the massive delay in articles and I will see you all next time in part 2.

The Where

So to begin, the Where, which given the breadth of options is a bit of a intimidating question. I answered by going for something both familiar and new. For this adventure in DMing I have chosen to zoom in from the Auran Empire Primer to the Province of Krysea. This lets me forgo the first 4 steps of the ACKS II Judges Journal, using the already extant timelines, places and much of the themes inherent such as the fall from the great heights of the Empire in its Prime. Very convenient and easy to use.

In its entirety Krysea encompasses a 24 x 12 hex area of 24 mile hexes or about 143,683 square miles. This is three times that advised of the Judges Journal but I have some good reasons for this I will detail this in the Why section out of every possible region in the Auran Empire Setting. But for now let me explain the area.

Krysea is the Southeast province from the great city of Aura, a stark rugged country known for its stout archers and mercenaries. Now part of the Empire, Krysea resisted Auran dominance for centuries and the remnants of the old border forts of the occupation still dot the landscape. This history began with being inducted into the former Auran League, the Pre-Imperial predecessor of the Auran Empire, after relief first from the Zaharan Sorcerer Kings and then induction after liberation from a Beastman Warlord. This second liberation took 24 years to do after the Warlord himself was killed but it did gain the burgeoning empire Krysea and Nicea to the west. All was not well however and for centuries there was a remnant of Separatism until the 3rd Rebellion was put down brutally enough to end the idea of a independent Krysea for good.

Aside from its history, Krysea has a interesting variety of its handful of terrain types. On the Eastern side of the Middle Range, the Drakonir Mountains, the rain breaks upon the eastern side, giving a wet and vibrant environment from the valleys all the way up to the mountains. The Western side meanwhile being fairly dry, though better connected with the more urban areas of the empire via shorter distance to the seas, as well as a relatively short trade route to Nicea. The central valley meanwhile, is well connected to the absolute center of Civilization via the Petrivor river from the base of the Meniri mountains all the way to Ithos in Tirenea, a short trip from Aura itself. This area is also well fed with water, trade and material as the mountains on both sides feature both Auran and Dwarven held passes, mines, quarries and forests. In short, the Central valley is a booming and bustling area of tightly integrated urban and rural holdings.

The Why

Now, with the Where settled, the Why requires a bit of explanation as well as Krysea is not especially well suited as compared to the Borderlands to the ACKS II Judges Journal Process, other provinces or even compared to contemporaries in other game settings. But with all decisions there are reasons, and to detail them out it would be best to bring in one of the maps I have for things thus far. This is an early version that has since been updated extensively but I will show more maps in the next few articles.

As seen in the 24 Mile Hex Map, Krysea actually splits very nicely into 3 regions recommended by the Judges Journal and each region could be a campaign on its own. We’re ambitiously going for the entirety of Krysea overall but that point is good to have known for how to package all the work done later.

It is a very large region, and as compared to more popular regions of this setting such as Rorn, Opelenea and Kemesh, Krysea is relatively unassuming for evoking a style of play many seek out. It does not have evocative Arthurian allure of Rorn where some others have built systems of Lords and Ladies with great formations of plated knights. It is not the Greco-Egyptian atmosphere of Kemesh or Opelenea, or even further flung lands of the Auran Empire setting.

However since the setting was established there is a trope present in Krysea, and I see a good use of it for my favorite thing in ACKS, Wargaming. The trope I speak of is the Decline of the Dwarves, part of the fictional races DNA ever since Tolkien. Krysea making up a good chunk of the Meniri and the Drakonir Mountains there is plenty of room for dozens of scattered dwarven holds, redoubts and fortresses.

Of course those that know me, I find great fun as playing dwarves and have never been fully satisfied by any games I’ve played doing justice to the possibilities presented by these short stout folk. Combine this together, and Krysea is perfectly suited for what I would want to play and as a first time DM that seems the absolute best thing out of everything I could do. Why else would I want to run a game if not make what I consider the most fun setup to play in?

With this basic overview finish, I’ll start detailing out some more in coming articles, hope you enjoy the process along with me.

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